Four current Georgia State students are proving that they can balance student life while managing their own successful marketing company, LYFE Marketing.
L.Y.F.E stands for “Live Young For Ever,” a company that promotes business products, services and events by using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
“When you’re younger, you have dreams and aspirations to do great things, but as you grow older, you’re forced to get a job and deal with the hardships of life. Through those experiences, dreams and aspirations might lead astray, but our motto here at LYFE Marketing is to always strive for what you really want to do–stay young forever and go out into the world and chase after your dreams,” said Keran Smith.
They said that they wouldn’t have been able to reach out to so many new students if it hadn’t been for the team establishing a strong social presence as a social media marketing company right from the beginning of LYFE’s development stage.
Currently, the marketing team of students has seen a massive increase in the number of Twitter followers, which is now up to 10,000 people, and LinkedIn connections, reaching more than 8,000 business professionals.
Some of the companies that they have worked with include: Westmar Student Lofts, This is it! BBQ, Romeo’s Pizza, Cutting Edge Barber and Beauty Institute, Ali Baba and Clearon Bleach Tablets, which is a bleach product that is sold in over 700 stores.
According to LYFE Marketing’s website, Josh Parham, WestMar Student Lofts’ leasing manager, said that the team of students was able to take the company’s Twitter account from a couple of hundred followers to several thousand in a matter of months.
At the moment there are open internship positions being offered by LYFE Marketing as a community manager and in marketing and sales.
The only two general requirements applicants must meet are willingness and interest to learn about these positions and social media marketing and availability.
These are paid internships, based on each project given to the interns. Community managers will receive $100 per successful campaign that they operate. The responsibilities include executing the social media marketing needs of these businesses.
Marketing and sales interns are responsible for learning how to reach clients and how to be persuasive. According to Sean Standberry, one of LYFE’s founders, it is a very flexible position and these interns will receive a 15 percent commission.
“We have interviewed and selected two people for positions so far but as we continue to grow as a company, people should always apply and fill out the applications,” co-founder Sherman Standberry said.
The group has also had two fashion shows that both sold out of tickets each time and the first show grossed over $5,000, according to Sherman. They used these two fashion show events to test their abilities to see if they really understood what they were doing and exactly what they were getting themselves into.
The company started off with a common interest of entrepreneurship among the three co-founders Sean and Sherman Standberry and Keran Smith.
The students observed how large of an impact social media was having on young adult lives, as well as the desire of companies to attract more customers on a larger scale.
A very early example of LYFE Marketing establishing themselves was by creating a $500 scholarship for other students to use towards books called the “College LYFE Scholarship.”
The LYFE Marketing team said that they hoped they could show other students that itis possible to balance educational responsibilities and establishing oneself as a professional, even before graduating from Georgia State.
In an age when social media marketing was still in its first stages of development, these entrepreneurial students began investigating different approaches that would improve traditional marketing tactics, such as magazine advertisements and billboards. They felt that marketing strategies at the time weren’t grabbing the attention of modern new-age consumers.
Sean Standberry, a senior accounting major and director of marketing and sales, said he must develop relationships with businesses in the greater Atlanta area, as well as with other businesses from different locations by setting up meetings to explain what LYFE Marketing does and consult them on strategic managing.
He said that over the summer of 2013, LYFE Marketing manged to stream an impressive $40,000 worth of revenue in 40 days using only Instagram as the social media platform for one particular company that hired them.
Sherman Standberry, a junior accounting major, is the director of social management for LYFE Marketing. He oversees business campaigns to ensure that they are being executed properly as well as figuring out new ways to make money for LYFE Marketing’s constantly growing clientele. This December will mark two years that Sherman has been working with LYFE Marketing.
He encouraged students to always keep their long-term goals and commitments in mind.
Sherman Standberry said, “I have seen so many businesses fail because people started a company with their friends and didn’t think the possible consequences through. Choose people for your company that have certain characteristics that will benefit the company and team that you’re establishing as a whole, and keep in mind that people have to build equity and demand for the services they will be providing.”
Jayde Powell, the social management lead, is a junior managerial science major and is minoring in Spanish. A student assistant at the Office of Diversity Education Planning, her job at LYFE is to manage campaigns for businesses and has been working for the student-run company since May.
Over a two-year span, these students have managed to work with over 25 different businesses, and one of their clients, Cardinal Group Management, won student housing’s “Best Social Media Campaign” in 2013.
Keran Smith, director of social strategy at LYFE, is a sophomore marketing major with some background in law. His job at the company is to find the best strategies on social platforms, such as Twitter, to reach target audiences.
“If we need to have a video made for LYFE Marketing, instead of paying someone to record the video for us, we would much rather teach ourselves how to do it and be innovative,” he said.
The students operating LYFE Marking said that there isn’t anything they they cant accomplish, because they view themselves as passionate and determined individuals with “the mindset and heart to believe.”
